At Funeral For Shabazz, Grief, Prayer And Respect

By RACHEL L. SWARNS

Published: June 28, 1997

Inside the mosque, hundreds of mourners shed their shoes and bowed their heads. And as dozens of tiny bulbs hanging from the domed ceiling burst into light, they knelt before the coffin of Dr. Betty Shabazz and chanted the Islamic prayer for the dead.

Outside, hundreds lined the street, jostling for space behind metal barricades as they gathered to pay their final respects to the widow of Malcolm X, the woman who survived her husband's murder and became a symbol of struggle in her own right.

Dr. Shabazz, who died on Monday from burns suffered in a fire on June 1, was buried yesterday after a spare, traditional Islamic prayer service at the Islamic Cultural Center on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. And her funeral drew a parade of prominent and ordinary New Yorkers.

But it was not until the mosque emptied of onlookers that Dr. Shabazz's six daughters approached the coffin. In the silence of the great hall, they stood side by side, their feet bare and their heads covered with shawls in Islamic fashion, surrounded by relatives.

''They were feeling strong at first, but at this point they're beginning to feel it,'' said Gordon Parks Sr., a film director who is the godfather of Dr. Shabazz's daughter Qubilah. Qubilah Shabazz's 12-year-old son, Malcolm, is accused of setting the fire at his grandmother's home in Yonkers.

To the thousands who revered her, Dr. Shabazz, an administrator at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, was a role model, an educator, and the keeper of her husband's legacy. To her daughters, she was all of that, but she was also their mother and protector.

She shielded them with her own body when the bullets flew at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, killing her husband 32 years ago. She hid books with photographs of their mortally wounded father from them when they were growing up.

She was strict and demanding, and she expected her girls to achieve academically and professionally, Mr. Parks said. But she was also warm and comforting.

''If it were not for my mother, I don't think I would have held up at all,'' said Qubilah Shabazz in a recent interview with The Minneapolis Star Tribune. ''She absorbed a lot of the pain for me.''

The daughters, who rank among them a public speaker, a rap artist and a city administrator, expressed none of their pain publicly yesterday. They did not speak at the mosque or at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, N.Y., where Dr. Shabazz was buried in Plot No. 150, directly above her husband's grave.

But, said Mr. Parks, they have agonized over her death and the fact that the police have accused Malcolm of causing it.

Mr. Parks, who could not attend the ceremonies yesterday because of illness, said the youngest daughter, Malaak, told him recently, ''I'm finding it hard to see Malcolm as my nephew.'' But she has since decided to support him wholeheartedly, he said. ''This has only brought them closer.''

Some onlookers, who included prominent people like Muhammad Ali, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and United States Representative Charles Rangel, sensed their heartbreak and offered tokens of comfort.

One woman brought six lilies for the six daughters and lined them up on the sidewalk outside the mosque, at 96th Street and Third Avenue. Another woman, Inuka Curry, a performance artist, brought her prayers.

''They're all my sisters,'' said Ms. Curry, who has never met the women. ''When I see them and I look at them, I feel a connection. We're all black women.''

For hundreds of people, the funeral was a historic event, and many perched on fences and snapped photographs, convinced they were witnessing a momentous occasion.

Akiya Valentine, a 16-year-old high school sophomore, persuaded her mother to come. Together, they sweated behind the metal barricades, watching ''all the black people united in paying their respects.''

Ayad Mohamed, a 44-year-old teacher, described a religious connection. ''She was a sister of Islam,'' he said. ''And she was a sister in the struggle.''

Kenyatta Ayinde, a 33-year-old property manager, said he admired how she managed to rear her children alone. ''If Malcolm X represented the best of black manhood, she represented the best of black womanhood,'' he said.

And Mr. Giuliani, the only person to offer a somewhat personal testimonial in a service dominated by prayer, called Dr. Shabazz ''a great mother'' and commended ''the way she educated young people.''

''I think everybody has been touched by this tragedy,'' he said.

The funeral followed two days in which hundreds of mourners flocked to a Harlem funeral home to pay their respects to Dr. Shabazz. The public is invited to commemorate her life at 3 P.M. on Sunday at Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Drive, near West 120th Street.

But the burial yesterday was private. A friend of the family burned incense in a clay pot near the grave. And relatives wept as they shoveled dirt on Dr. Shabazz's coffin.

''She united her people around the country,'' said Heshaam Jaaber, the Muslim cleric from Elizabeth, N.J., who officiated at the final ceremony. ''She was a major catalyst for change and I admired her.''

Photos: Dr. Betty Shabazz's daughters at her funeral yesterday at the Islamic Cultural Center in Manhattan. Above, from left, Ilyasah, Attallah and Gamilah. (Reuters); Below, from left, Malikah, Mlaak and Qubilah. (Agence France-Presse); Dr. Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, died Monday from burns she suffered June 1. (pg. 27)